Recognizing the Genuine: The Reformation

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles with me and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians.
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As I've already made mention, just a few moments ago, we are celebrating today the Protestant Reformation, 501 years since the anniversary of that day when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.
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We are also, however, as a church, in a study of the book of 1 Corinthians.
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And in our church, it is our custom to preach verse by verse, and we rarely deviate from that practice.
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And so this morning, we're not going to give up our continuation in 1 Corinthians.
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However, by the Lord's providence, which often is the case, God has led us to a text that just so happens to, as we can imagine the Lord doing this, it just so happens to speak so well to the issue.
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Now, what is on the screen is not the correct title.
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What should be on the screen is different than what is there.
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The correct title of today is Recognizing the Genuine, the Protestant Reformation.
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So you can just take that down.
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The title of today is Recognizing the Genuine, the Protestant Reformation.
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Now, another custom that we have in this church is to stand for the reading of God's word.
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So I want to invite you to do that with me.
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This is the word of God, and as we stand when we stand for presidents, we stand for leaders, we stand for people of import.
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We will stand for the word of God.
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And so it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and we're only going to look at verses 18 and 19.
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It says these words.
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For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you, in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord, though we are only going to look at a couple of verses today, Lord, there is a mountain of truth in this text.
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There is a depth that could never be plumbed, even in many, many sermons.
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So, Father, I pray that you would give us clarity of mind as we look at this text.
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I pray that you would keep me from error as I teach this text, and I pray that in everything and in all that we do, that you would be glorified.
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Father, as I've already said, and I prayed every time, keep me from error for the sake of your people, for the sake of my heart and conscience and for the sake of your glorious name.
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May the truth be proclaimed from this pulpit filled with the spirit and may, as my brother has already prayed, may it be mixed with faith and the people of God be led to repentance at his throne.
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And it's in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Now, for those of you who have been a part of this study for the last several months that we have been in 1 Corinthians, you'll know where we are.
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But I know that we have today many people who are not normally with us.
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So I do want to kind of catch you up on the context because it is important to understand why Paul is saying what he's saying.
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Paul is correcting the Corinthians regarding their worship.
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The Corinthian church was practicing something that the first generation of the church practiced, and that is called the agape or the agape feast.
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And what that means is that within the worship service, you remember the early church didn't have a building like this.
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The early church didn't have pews and a chancel like we have.
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The early church met in homes and they would gather together for worship.
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And as part of worship, one of the things that would happen in the worship service was a meal.
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And that meal was called the love feast or the agape feast.
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The people of God would come together and they would have that feast together.
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And the apostle Paul is telling us in 1 Corinthians 11 that there was a division that had arisen among the people of God.
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And the division that had arisen was this.
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There were people in the church who had food and they would come early and they would eat their food quickly and they would fill themselves up in gluttony.
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They would drink themselves to a stupor and then they would have none to share with the rest of the poor who would come later.
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And Paul says by doing that, it's not even the Lord's Supper that you're eating.
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You're coming together for the worse and not for the better.
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And so that was our message last week about the inappropriate way of worship, the inappropriate doing of the Lord's Supper.
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Because if we are being stingy, if we're being unloving, if we're not concerned with our neighbor, if we're not concerned with other people in the church around us, if it's all about me and not about Christ and not about others, then what we are doing is not of God.
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In the midst of this, in the midst of that proclamation, the apostle Paul says something very peculiar.
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He says, I know that there are divisions among you or I heard that there are divisions among you.
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Remember, Paul is a far off.
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He's receiving this information by someone who's bringing him a report of what's happening at Corinth.
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And he says, I have heard that there are divisions among you and I believe it in part.
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For there must be factions among you, because when there are divisions among you, it shows those who are genuine.
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I want for a moment you to try to remember when we first opened the book of 1st Corinthians together.
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Like I said, if you've been here, if you haven't been here, you won't remember this.
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But in the very first chapter of 1st Corinthians, Paul says this.
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He says, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you might be united in the same mind and of the same judgment.
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So in a sense, in Paul's mind, the priority has been from the beginning of this book of bringing together of unity in the body.
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You remember in the second and third chapters, he condemns them because some of them said, I am of Paul or I am of Apollos and I am of Peter or I am of Christ.
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And he said these divisions that are among you are not good.
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They're causing strife in the body and they're pushing you apart rather than bringing you together.
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So since the beginning of the book, Paul has been concerned about division in the church.
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So he has a priority and a desire for unity.
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But then in chapter 11, he says, but there must be factions among you.
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Is this Paul speaking out of both sides of his mouth? Is this Paul condemning what he said before or contradicting what he has already said? No, he's simply stating a bare truth that should be understood by all of us.
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Truth and falsehood.
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Truth and error cannot mutually coexist.
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Truth and error cannot live in the same house long before they will divide.
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Truth and error cannot be bedfellows.
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They will one have to get out of the bed.
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They cannot continue to live together.
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Truth and error.
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And so Paul says, I know there's going to be divisions among you because when their factions rise up, it shows who is genuine.
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I want to just real quick.
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If you have your Bibles, the first Corinthians 11, 18, I just want to show you a few words here because these words are important.
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And as the Bible came to us in words, it's important that we understand what these words mean.
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There are four key words in this text.
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The first one is the word division.
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I hear that there are divisions among you.
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In Greek, it's schismata.
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It's where we get the word schism or schism.
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It means to tear apart or to rent apart.
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And Paul's saying, I hear that there are schisms among you.
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Doesn't mean that they had split up as a church, but that within the church there was divisions.
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Within the church, there were cliques and and divides.
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And Paul says, I believe it in part.
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I don't quite know exactly what he means there.
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I think he believes it in part in saying, I don't think it's everyone.
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I believe it in part.
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I believe that there are some of you who this is absolutely true.
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And perhaps some of you are not.
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Some of you are trying to be peacemaker.
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Some of you are trying to bring people together.
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But I believe at least in part there are divisions among you.
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The key, though, is that he did believe it.
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Why did Paul believe the divisions were there? Well, because he's already talked about him.
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He says that some of you say I'm of Peter.
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Some of you say I'm of Paul.
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Some of you say I'm of Apollos.
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He knows the divisions are there and he believes it.
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It's not everyone, but there are those in the church that are dividing and there's a reason for the division.
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And they've created factions.
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That word factions is an interesting word in the Greek heros.
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And so we get the word heresy.
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He says, I believe it.
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There must be heresy among you.
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That's an interesting way of saying it, isn't it? That's not what he means.
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And our word heresy is actually taken from a long line of using that word in a different way.
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The word heresy in the ancient world meant party or faction or group, where that later would become heresy as a sense of false teaching is because it was the groups in the church that would try to lead false teaching parties in the church or false teaching groups.
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And thus they were known as the heretics or the dividers, the ones who were creating factions in the church.
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So so this word heresy means just that.
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And Paul says there must be factions among you because the factions among you show who is true and who is false.
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It shows that, again, truth and error cannot mutually coexist.
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And though there is a desire for unity, it can never happen at the expense of the truth.
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Let me say that again, though there is always a desire for unity, it can never happen at the expense of the truth, Paul says, because.
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These factions show who are genuine.
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That word genuine in the ESV is an interesting word as well, it's the word documoy, and you say, well, what does that mean? Documoy means genuine or authentic, something that has stood up to the test and a good place to understand what Paul is saying here is to compare this to another passage.
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If we go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 9, if you remember our study of that in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, Paul said this, I beat my body and bring it into subjection so that after preaching to others, I myself would not be a documoy.
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Not up to the test.
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Disqualified, that I beat my body, I buffet my body so that when I have preached to others, I myself would not be disqualified, a documoy.
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So the opposite of that, that you understand the alpha primitive, when you put the A in front of a word, it makes it the opposite, like theist and atheist.
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Well, documoy means genuine, a documoy not genuine, documoy authentic, a documoy not authentic.
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So in this phrase, Paul is saying he's saying the divisions among you show which ones among you are the documoy, the authentic, the real, the genuine, the truthful, the faithful, the hopeful, the Christians.
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President Lincoln, when he was in the midst of the Civil War, was asked, do you think God is on our side? Do you think God is on our side? And President Lincoln said, it doesn't it doesn't matter.
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He said, what matters is if we are on God's side.
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It doesn't matter if God's on my side, what matters is if I'm on his side.
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In every division regarding truth in the church, there's God's side and the false side.
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In every division in the church, there are those who are going to stand with God and those who are not.
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The documoy stand with God.
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The adocumoy stand against God.
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And that's the division that Paul is referring to.
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And he says this, he says, so that the genuine may be phoneroi, Greek.
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Phoneroi means apparent or clear.
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It's easy for someone to sound right if no one corrects him.
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You know, Proverbs tells us that it says the one who states his case first seems correct until someone else comes along to correct him.
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And that's what these divisions do, because you understand how cult groups arise, right? You understand how cults arise.
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One man begins to lead and no one challenges him.
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One man begins to say crazy things and everybody says, well, I guess that's right.
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One man begins to say amazingly false things and people say, well, he's done us right so far and there's no one to challenge him.
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That's why I believe in the elder system that we have here at the church.
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I believe it's biblical.
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I believe it's the right way to have church.
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I believe that every pastor who has no one to be accountable to is dangerous.
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I believe every pastor who has no one to question what he's saying from the pulpit is a dangerous man.
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There must be accountability even for the man who stands up and preaches the word of God.
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In fact, I would say especially for the man who stands up and preaches the word of God.
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If there is no accountability, you're going down a dangerous road.
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Paul says they're going to be recognized by the division.
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They're going to be recognized by the faction who is genuine and who is not.
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Who's standing on God's side and who is not.
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And Paul's point in this statement is that sometimes division, even though it's not the desire, even though it's not the plan, even though it's not what we want, sometimes division is necessary to show those who are standing with God and those who are not.
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And that's the background of this passage and the foundation of what we're going to talk about today, because all of this is introduction.
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I want to now bring you to our lesson for the morning, and that is having looked at this text and what Paul says about division, I now want to talk about the great division that happened 501 years ago, because I want to tell you this morning, there are people who say it was bad.
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There are people who would tell you that the Protestant Reformation was a horrible thing.
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In fact, how many of you know who Matt Walsh is? Matt Walsh is a social commentator.
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He's got the ear of a lot of people and a lot of people listen to what he has to say because he says things that we would generally agree with.
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He tends to be opposed to abortion and pro-life.
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He tends to be opposed to homosexual marriage and pro-family.
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He tends to be for the things we're for, tends to be against the things we're against.
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So a lot of conservative people like to hear what he has to say and a lot of people promote what he has to say.
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But here is the issue with Matt Walsh, in case you did not know, he is, in fact, a Roman Catholic.
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So a lot of what he says is peppered in with Roman Catholic theology and Roman Catholic teaching.
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And so this past week, when we were celebrating Reformation Day on Wednesday, when we were celebrating the great reclamation of the gospel that came in the Reformation, this is what he wrote.
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He said, the church is fractured into a million pieces, Christians disagree about everything.
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Even if you dislike the Catholic Church, it seems odd for any Christian to celebrate Reformation.
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You're celebrating disunity and brokenness.
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It's like throwing a divorce party.
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He goes on to say, no matter what branch of Christian you are, the proper attitude toward the Reformation is one of solemnness and sadness.
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Even if you think it was necessary, it just makes no sense to celebrate that there are 10,000 denominations.
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Well, Walsh is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I want to respond by saying this.
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The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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During the time of the Reformation had been so hidden and so corrupted among the people of God, it had been so dark.
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After the Dark Ages and into the 1300s, where we had the Black Plague and the deaths that were happening as a result, there was such a need for revival.
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You don't want to call it Reformation.
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Fine.
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Call it revival, because that's what it was.
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It was a revival of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And someone says, well, there's a lot of division that it creates.
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Absolutely it does.
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And Paul says that it's going to create division so that those who are genuine may be obvious.
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And so you say, well, why should we celebrate it? We celebrate the reclamation of the gospel, the the the taking away of the blinders of Rome, the taking away of the darkness.
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There's a phrase in Latin, Post Tenebrux Lux, and that means after darkness comes the light.
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And that's what the Reformation was.
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A time of darkness was over and the light was shown.
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So today I want to look at four things we're going to and I'll and I'll be brief, but I want to look at four things, the cause, the conflict, the concern and the continuation of the Reformation.
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That's our four fold outline this morning.
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Let's first look at the cause, because a lot of people don't understand.
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I am surprised by how many people do not understand anything about church history.
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We talked about this before, I mentioned this before, but there's the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown and his sister are talking and the sister is writing a paper and Charlie Brown says, what are you writing about? And she says, I'm writing about church history.
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And she begins her paper, my pastor was born in 1930, that's church history and that's how people understand church history.
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It's it's been around since the Gaithers, right? It's been around since the 50s.
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It's been around since Southern gospel music was popular.
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That's the history of the church.
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Years ago, I was in talks with a seminary to teach a history course.
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And I said, well, if I'm going to teach church history, I'm going to focus on the first four hundred years of the church, the great creeds and confessions that came out of that time and how the church began to leave the the small cell that was in Israel and move out into all the world.
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In the east, you had the Thomasian church in the in the north and in the west, you had Paul taking the gospel into Macedonia and into Greece and in the south.
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And you had those taking it into Alexandria and Egypt and into Africa.
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I said, we need to talk about these things.
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And they and the person said, you can't teach that.
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That's Catholic.
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I said, no, it's not Catholic.
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It's the history of the church.
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What do you mean it's Catholic? Church history didn't begin with the Baptists, y'all.
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Church history didn't begin with the Lutherans.
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Church history didn't begin with the Calvinists.
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Church history didn't begin even with Augustine.
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Church history began when Jesus was hung on that cross and he died.
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And you could say it goes back into the Old Testament.
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But we know on the day of Pentecost, when the spirit fell on those three thousand and they began to go out into the world and share the gospel, the church was spreading all over the known world.
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And has been you say, well, why then the Reformation at the Catholic Church, why then the Reformation? Here's why.
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Because as history often does, and I wish I had time to take you through a whirlwind tour, I really can't.
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But as history often does, history brings time of great revival and sometimes the great diminishing of truth.
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And one of the great diminishing of truth that happened was what was called the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages.
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When the church was preaching to people in a language they didn't even understand, the Bible was in Latin and many priests didn't even speak Latin, and yet they were proclaiming what they thought was the truth and they were proclaiming what they knew, even though they didn't even know it.
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And the great event, I say great event, the terrible event of the 1300s was what is called the Black Plague.
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The Black Plague brought a third of Europe to its death.
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We can't even imagine that.
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Can you imagine if tomorrow we began to see a disease that wiped out a third of the United States? Do you think that people would begin at that moment to start considering more specifically and more importantly, eternal things? Yes, it did.
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As death reigned, as people were seeing their children die, as people were seeing their spouses die, as people were seeing their siblings die, people all around were wondering, where do we go for hope? And the church offered hope, but not for free.
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We're willing to sell you hope, but it will come at a price.
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And justification became a commodity that could be purchased.
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We will sell you an indulgence.
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We'll sell you a piece of paper that will grant you forgiveness of your sins.
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What man would not take the money that he's earned and buy his salvation if it were for sale? And then you could also purchase the salvation of your loved ones.
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And what man who for a piece of silver would not take his mother who was burning in the fires of purgatory and relieve her of that fire by simply allowing a few coins to cling in the coffer? And as Johann Tetzel said, when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.
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St.
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Peter's Basilica, which still stands today, was built on the money that was taken from the indulgences.
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It is not a celebration of the gospel.
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It is a celebration of falsehood.
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And it's an ugly place.
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I want to tell you, if you came in here today and you have a Roman Catholic background, I'm not trying to kick you in the shins.
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I love you.
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I will tell you this, though, there was a there was a reason why God brought the Reformation, I believe, and it was because of so much falsehood.
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Martin Luther himself, again, I don't have time to give a biography of Luther, but Luther was a man who struggled with his own salvation.
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He was a monk who struggled with his own justification.
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And when he finally came to understand that justification was by faith and not by works, that justification was through grace and not by good deeds, he began to understand what the Bible says when it says that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the power of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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And so Martin Luther was proclaiming justification, not by works and not through the pope and not through the indulgence, but justification by faith in Christ.
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And he was asked by one of his superiors, if you take away relics and you take away indulgences and you take away good works, what do you leave a man with? He said, Christ and Christ alone is enough.
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And so Luther nails.
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Ninety five statements of doctrine opposing the sale of indulgences to adore the church at Wittenberg, and when he nailed it there, people people take that as a big issue.
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He nailed it like that's a big deal.
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It wasn't that big a deal at the time.
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That was actually how conversations were started.
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It was like a Facebook post, maybe a little bit more severe, but that's what it was a posting publicly.
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This is my position.
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Let's talk.
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And boy, did they and debates began to rise up and conversations began to start.
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And finally, Martin Luther found himself under the interdict of the church, meaning he was under the sanction of the church.
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You are not to teach these things anymore.
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And Martin Luther took the interdict from the pope.
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He tore it up and he burned it in the city square.
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He was taking a stand.
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And Luther was taken to the imperial Diet of Worms.
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The imperial Diet of Worms was essentially like a council that was meeting to determine what should be done about this monk, what should be done about this preacher.
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And this is what I call the conflict of the Reformation, because it began with a cause.
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There's a there's a cause of the Reformation.
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Now there's a conflict.
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The conflict is what do we do about this man? And by the way, John Calvin was four years old when this was happening.
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If you want to just a just a picture of time when Martin Luther is at the Diet of Worms, John Calvin's four years old.
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Ulrich Zwingli is 33.
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Martin Luther was in his 30s, I forget, I think he was 38, but it was right around that time.
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So so Zwingli and Luther are contemporaries and Calvin will come later.
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But these three great men were called the magisterial reformers of the church.
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That means that they had the city that they were in on their side.
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They had the magistrates on their side.
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You had Luther in Germany.
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You had Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland.
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And they were not only bringing Reformation in the church, they were bringing Reformation in their entire countries.
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Right.
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That's what that refers to.
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So Luther's brought to the Diet of Worms and he is demanded that he recant.
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Martin Luther, will you recant of what you have taught? Will you recant of what you have have done? Will you recant of what you've written? They had all of his books laid out on table.
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Will you recant of these things that you have published and that you've sent out into the world? And Martin Luther said, give me a day, give me a day to think it over.
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He didn't have an answer right away.
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I think in his heart he knew what the answer should be.
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I think he knew in his heart what the answer was.
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But like any man, he was concerned with the consequences.
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He knew if he didn't recant, his life would be forfeited.
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Any safe passage he'd been given would be reneged.
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And he would be under the condemnation of the church and the state, because at the time they were one in the same.
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By the way, when you have a pope and you have a king, who exercises more power? The pope has the power to send the king to hell.
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The pope is always the one with the power.
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Martin Luther went and he prayed and he prayed and he prayed.
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And he came back in the next day and they stood him before the council and they said, Martin Luther, will you recount, recant of these teachings? And I want to read the quote that has been ascribed to him by many different people.
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And some read it a little different way.
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But this is this is close enough to what he said.
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Martin Luther said this, he said, unless I am convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or by clear reason, for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves.
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I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God.
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I cannot and will not recant anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against a man's conscience.
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Here I stand.
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I can do no other.
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God help me.
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Amen.
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Right then Luther fell under the condemnation of the church.
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By God's grace, he was kidnapped right after by a friend.
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They kidnapped him and took him to Wartburg Castle, where he would stay for many months and he would actually translate the Bible into German.
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The translation that the Germans still use today, the Lutheran translation of the Bible.
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After this, he would go back and he would preach from his pulpit the Reformation principles and the Reformation would stand and many would come after him and stand beside him and stand upon the rock and continue to proclaim the truth.
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And while there were differences in people, yes, there are 10,000 denominations, that's actually highly inflated and conflated.
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That's almost as if you're taking every church and making it its own denomination, which some people think that's true.
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There was unity among the reformers, even though there was much more unity than there was division.
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One time, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli came together at the Marlboro Colloquy and when they came together, they had 15 points of doctrine that they argued about.
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They agreed over 14 of them, but they divided over one.
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And it was the table, which we're going to talk about next week.
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Within the table, is the body and blood of Christ truly represented physically? Or is it a memorial to the body and blood of Christ? And that was where those two men divided.
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And yet, they were bound in unity on so many other things.
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They were bound in unity over the five battle cries of the Reformation.
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I brought this banner up.
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I know it's a little disheveled.
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We use this when we go out and proclaim the gospel.
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When we go out and set up our fishing hole booth, we take this banner and it's seen better days.
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But I wanted to bring it up today because this banner is the proclamation of the five points of doctrine.
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You know, most people associate Reformed theology with the five points of Calvinism.
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And that's important, but that's a sermon for another day.
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Because what united the Reformers was not the tulip, but the solas.
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The solas is what unite us as Reformers.
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The solas are simple.
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And I know it's probably hard for some of you to see.
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I stood back there to see if I could read it and I couldn't.
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So I imagine some of you probably are going to have trouble reading it, too.
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But I'll give it to you best I can.
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If you can see up here, the five solas are simple.
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Sola gratia.
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Salvation is by grace alone.
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It is not earned.
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It is not purchased.
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It cannot be bought and it cannot be sold.
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It can only be won by Jesus Christ.
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And it has been and it is in his grace that we are saved, not by works.
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Number two, sola fide.
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Justification is by faith alone.
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Not by anything that we do for ourselves, but by what Christ has done.
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We cannot work our way to be saved.
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And let me tell you this, beloved.
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Nothing you have ever done has ever made you any more saved than you were when you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You say, well, I was baptized.
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In that baptism, you were not more saved.
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You were identified with Christ publicly.
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You received a sign of a covenant that God made with you through the work of Jesus Christ.
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And in that baptism, you proclaimed your faith, but you didn't get more saved by getting more wet.
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When you participate in communion, you don't get more saved by taking the bread and taking the cup.
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Salvation is by faith alone.
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And we do not add or subtract anything from what Christ has done.
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The third, solus Christus.
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Salvation is in Christ alone.
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It's not in the church as Rome proclaimed.
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In fact, this is why excommunication was so dangerous in this time, because if you were excommunicated from the church, you were excommunicated from salvation.
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If you were put out from the church, you were put out of the only means of grace that God has given.
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And that is the mass.
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The reformer said, no, we are saved through Christ alone.
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And by the way, that's all justification by faith means I am justified by faith in Christ alone.
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His work completely, fully and totally, nothing else can be added, nothing can be taken away.
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He has saved to the uttermost those who draw unto God through him.
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Number four, sola scriptura.
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The Bible alone is our sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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In Roman Catholic theology, you have the Bible and you have the church's magisterium or the teaching arm of the church, which is said to uphold the traditions of the apostles.
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And so you have the Bible and tradition.
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And guess which one has more weight? They will say they are equal, but no scales are equal when it comes to the minds of men.
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And it is always the tradition.
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Why is it that the Bible would never proclaim faith in the Virgin Mary for the forgiveness of anything? And yet they claim to ask for forgiveness from Mary.
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Why is it that the Bible says nothing of transubstantiation? And yet they proclaim that is the way a man is made right with God.
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Why is it the Bible says there is only one priest and one mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ? And they say, no, you must go through the priest and the pope and the magisterium.
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It is because tradition has outweighed the scripture, has overshadowed the scripture, and now the Bible is set aside in light of the tradition.
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Lastly, solely Deo Gloria, to God alone be all the glory, not to the pope, not to the bishops, not even to the apostles, to no one else except God alone.
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That is the five foundation stones that the reformers stood upon.
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That is the fivefold truth that the reformers proclaimed.
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And that is the division that they had with Rome.
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And you say, you mean Rome would deny these things? You mean Rome would deny what this says? I want to read to you from the Council of Trent.
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By the way, if you're not familiar with church history, the church would often have councils and these councils were often in response to something that had happened.
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Well, the Council of Trent happened in response to the Reformation.
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The Council of Trent is known as the Anti-Reformation Council, and I want to read to you directly from the Council of Trent.
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Canon nine.
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If anyone sayeth that by faith alone the impious are justified, and such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining of grace or justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema.
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If you say justification is by faith alone, you are under the curse of God.
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Canon 24.
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If anyone says that the justice or justification received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the works are merely the fruits and signs of justification already obtained, but not the cause and increase thereof, let him be anathema.
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If you say that your justification is by faith and your works don't increase it or your works don't add to it, then you are under the curse of God.
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Canon 30.
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If anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received to every penitent sinner, the guilt is remitted and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out and such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world or the next in purgatory before the entrance into the kingdom of heaven can be opened to him, let him be anathema.
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If you believe that all of your sins have been washed away, you're under the curse of God.
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Do you understand why Catholics believe in purgatory? Because they do not believe in the sufficient sacrifice of Christ, because they believe you receive the mass, you're forgiven, but then you go and sin and when you sin, you're dirty again.
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And unless you die from choking down the bread, you're going to die impure.
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Unless you die at the moment of receiving the table, you're going to die impure.
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And when you die impure, you cannot go into the presence of Almighty God.
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So you must go to a place of cleansing or sanctification or purging.
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And that is where the word purgatory is derived.
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You must be purged a thousand years, ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years.
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It depends on just how dirty you are.
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But in Roman Catholic theology, there is no full forgiveness offered in the blood of Christ.
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There is no full justification offered.
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You have to add to it.
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And the reformers said, no.
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No.
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And this is why Paul says there must be divisions among you.
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There must.
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Finally and fourthly, the continuation of the Reformation.
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As familiar as many of us are with the five solas, I want to introduce one last one to you because this is the one that's often forgotten.
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Many of you are members of this church for a long time.
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You've heard me talk about the solas before.
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Of course, some of this wasn't new, but maybe this will be new.
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There's another Latin phrase that we should all remember, and that is this.
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Semper Reformanda.
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We know what Semper Fi is, right? If you're a marine, Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
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So what is Semper Reformanda? Always reforming.
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I believe this with all my heart.
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The church today is in just as great a need of reform as the church of the 16th century.
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There are people today who have forgotten or outright rejected what the Bible has to say about Christ, what the Bible has to say about the gospel.
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I watched a video this week, a church in Georgia, one of the largest churches in the United States, began its worship service.
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Not a special service, not an evening event, not some special play, but their worship service began with an ode to the pop songs of the 1990s.
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You are my fire.
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That's literally how the service started.
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Five guys dressed as the Backstreet Boys led them through a medley of boy band tunes, and everybody was just loving it.
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The landscape of the church across America has changed.
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We've gone from participation to observation, from service to consumerism, from community to anonymity.
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All accompanied by a healthy dose of bad theology and the change that is needed doesn't begin.
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I must say this, this is where I will bring it home to you.
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The change doesn't begin with denominations.
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It doesn't begin with large ministries.
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It doesn't begin with even churches.
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It begins with you.
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One person who is willing to go back to the Bible and see where the changes need to be made in his life and begin making them can make all the difference in the world.
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That's what the Reformation was.
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It was the greatest back to the Bible movement in the history of two thousand years of church.
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One man with a hammer and a nail changed Germany for the entire Western world for the gospel.
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One sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards in the United States began the Great Awakening, which spread all across our land.
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One voice thundering from the lips of George Whitefield reached more ears in the United States than even the voice of George Washington.
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And one missionary, William Carey, with a heart to see the unreached people hear the word of God, went, even though he was told if the heathen is going to hear the gospel, he'll hear it without your words.
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And he went anyway and he preached the gospel.
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One person can make a difference.
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Reformation begins with the revivals of individuals to the truth of the gospel, and then it never ends.
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Every one of us needs to constantly be reformed.
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We should ask God revive us again, reform us anew and use us in whatever way you choose.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you for the history that we get to be reminded of every year.
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And Lord, may we never forget the past.
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Lord, as it has so often said to be doomed to repeat it.
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Father, we do pray for a repetition of history.
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We pray that reformation would come again.
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We pray, Lord, that we would see people throughout our land and people throughout the world proclaiming the gospel truth.
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Lord, we think about the church in China that we just talked about several weeks ago.
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They're proclaiming the truth and we thankfully stand with them.
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We think about the persecuted church in the Middle East.
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And we pray for them.
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We know, Lord, we do not stand alone.
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And though there may be many denominational titles, there is but one gospel.
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And Lord, we proclaim that gospel and we stand with every church that does and every person that does.
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And we give you all the glory.
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All the praise and all the honor.
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And father, I do pray that today, as the gospel has been proclaimed, that there is justification by none other because there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and at the name of Jesus Christ.
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Every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.
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The father fathers that's been proclaimed.
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Lord, I commit this people to you and I say, save whom you will sanctify whom you will, God, draw them to yourself and your everlasting power and Lord, open hearts to believe.
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Father, if there are those today who have sat here and heard the word of God and they have been drawn to you.
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Oh, merciful savior, save them, open their eyes that they may see, open their ears that they may hear, open their hearts that they might believe the wondrous truths which come from your word.
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In Christ's name, Amen.